According to an article I came across today in the Financial Times, computer games designed to improve your brain have only negligible effect on your mental ability and cognitive function.
Researchers at Cambridge University, Manchester University and King’s College London have carried out large-scale clinical trials of brain training games and found very little or no improvements in the participants who played the games. In some cases the control group showed more improvement than the brain training group. The conclusion is that while there’s no harm in brain training, apart from the cost of buying the programs, it doesn’t have any significant benefit either. The lead researcher, Dr Adrian Owen of Cambridge University, commented that,
“Brain training doesn’t do you any harm but you might as well do something else mentally stimulating, like learning a new language – it’s as good as brain training and you will be able to speak a foreign language.”
Have you tried any of these brain training programs? Have they been effective?
